Tell me again I should echo Rupert Murdoch

In 2006 the Sydney Morning Herald gleefully announced a convert to its cause:

Rupert Murdoch, powerfully converted to the climate change cause, says that business and government need to confront it … Even though he was still not entirely certain about it, “the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt”, he said.

The Left ever since have demanded Murdoch journalists and other sceptics fall into line with the warmists’ new hero:

Entrepreneur Dick Smith, at the launch of his book on population policy, declared this week that Murdoch’s Australian newspapers were defying their boss’s global warming stand ("give the planet the benefit of the doubt") and needed bringing to heel. Murdoch, in short, had to tell us what to write. “Rupert, I ask you to come back to Australia,” Smith cried. “Come back and take the reins, your editors are losing the plot and need to be reminded that you accept we must transform the way we use energy and that we need to act now.”

ABC hosts cited Murdoch as their new authority to cow even politicians into silence:

The ABC’s Jon Faine this morning ... demanded to know why Fielding did not agree with Rupert Murdoch and give the planet “the benefit of the doubt”. (Mudoch, incidentally, is the one authority Faine cited.)

Even professional alarmist Tim Flannery cited Murdoch as his muse:

To quote Rupert Murdoch, ‘You’ve got to give the planet the benefit of the doubt’...

In 2009 then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull quoted him, too, to demand his party back Labor’s emissions trading scheme:

If we were to, if this legislation is knocked back Kevin Rudd will have no choice but to go to a double dissolution election… The party would be, look we would be wiped out.... You know, as Rupert Murdoch famously said, and Rupert Murdoch is a hard-headed, naturally sceptical person I think as we all know, he said you’ve got to give the planet the benefit of the doubt, and that is the only responsible course of action.

Senator Nick Xenophon was still quoting Murdoch as recently as last week:

My view is this: I do believe that climate change is real and that we need to – as Rupert Murdoch once famously said – give the planet the benefit of the doubt.

And ABC and Fairfax journalists looked forward to me dropping my own scepticsm and mockery of Earth Hour in deference to my boss:

Last November, while in Japan, [Murdoch"> announced his change of heart [on global warming">. “… I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue,” he said then… So News Corp cutting back to zero emissions would be the equivalent, Murdoch said, of turning off London for five days. It was an interesting analogy, given some of his columnists in Australia had criticised Earth Hour ... The Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, a climate change sceptic, seemed exasperated that anyone would think the announcement would change his mind.

[Murdoch"> said climate change should be treated with ''much scepticism''. If the temperature rises 3C in 100 years, ''at the very most one of those [degrees"> would be man-made,'' he said. ''If the sea level rises six inches, that's a big deal in the world, the Maldives might disappear or something, but OK, we can't mitigate that, we can't stop it, we have to stop building vast houses on seashores. ''We can be the low-cost energy country in the world. We shouldn't be building windmills and all that rubbish,'' he said.